"If Ifs and Buts were beer and nuts we could have a hell of a party!" -- Unknown

With the above in mind...

"The gameplay in Postal 2 is 'See person, kill person'.

Yeah. As is every first person shooter game out there. As I already said before, it's not gameplay. It's the story behind it. If you take a game like Soldier of Fortune, remove the "killing terrorists" part and substitute it with "killing everyone", it wouldn't make a bit of difference gameplay-wise. If you've got a problem with the morality of the story, fine. Just don't blame it on the gameplay, because you're blaming the wrong thing."

An excellent purely semantic rebuttal. Assuming your definition of "gameplay" does not include the story behind it -- the motivation of the protagonist, to borrow from another well stated post on this thread (that I don't agree with). Change the name and story behind "Space Invaders" to "European Invaders" without touching the game-play and you still have a fun game... with a different context; that begs the question: do you want to start popping quarters into that machine?. Change the back-story of "European Invaders" to explain that the lone protagonist is the last Zulu warrior in Africa, dodging colonial bullets to save his people, and, again, to me, you have a different game. Say the guy at the bottom of the screen is the last British trooper in his column and it's a different story again.

Posted purely out of honest curiosity :

What do *you* (no one in particular here) find appealing about "Postal 2" and will you play it when it's released?

Example response (mine): I like FPS type games and I like to think I keep a pretty open mind -- hence my looking into this game; even though I didn't like the first Postal. I won't play "Postal 2", based on what I've seen (and read) because a) it looks like, to quote [i]Saving private Ryan[/] "A serious misallocation of... resources." (read: the latest Unreal tech) and I, personally find the subject matter to be suspect. I'll keep an eye on the game, as I do many other things, but unless there is some kind of radical redesign of the artwork and storyline, it most likely won't find a place in my game library.

Please take note of the lack of "Yor a FAGG!" and "I ROOL u SUX!" in the above example.

" I can separate games from reality, I just don't really get why anyone would want to play this kind of game."

I totally agree with Von on this point.

From my POV: from a pure mass marketing point of view, I am left a bit puzzled as to why anyone would release a video of a game of such a contravesal nature, -- alpha, beta or ship -- that looked so bad.

Sure, I -- and others -- think the game's premise is more than a bit suspect but, for crying out loud, if this video was the only contact you ever had with the game, prior to its release, would you, honestly, buy it?

The whole "Murder Simulator" Vs. "Hero Simulator" thing first washed over me when I jumped into a thread having to do with "System Shock 2". I was stuck and looking for tips but I found so much more...

For any and all that may or may not have played that game; there was this part --- and my memory is a bit hazy (as it has been a while) so be kind -- where you have been walking over corpses and blasting zombie ex-crewmen for a while (and slowly discovering what happened on the ship where you awake) then you come to a point where you stumble upon the aftermath of a pretty big fire-fight. I didn't know whether it was because I had been playing for, like, 12 hours straight but I could swear I heard gunfire in an adjacent hallway... so I ran as fast as I could, thinking I was going to find the last few humans on the ship desperately dukeing it out with the bad guys! If I could just get there in time, maybe I could --- being the hero of the story, after all -- make the difference between a doomed last stand and a first victory for the good guys!

Well, this was not the case.

While the scene was obviously set as a "Last Stand" by the ship security forces but whatever fight took place happened long before I got there.

I mentioned the above description of my gameplay experience on the message board without knowing the floodgate it would open.The thread grew and grew. It would seem, countless folks had just the same reaction to the scene I had!

Everyone who responded wandered into that in-game moment thinking they would find a hopelessly outnumbered security team, low on ammo, wounded to the last man, fighting wave after wave of zombies and they -- the "Hero"! -- would save the day!

Already long story short:

Everyone wanted to SAVE the security guys and be the 'hero of the moment'... and they were disappointed when they discovered this wasn't gonna happen.

That message board thread, and some other threads -- like this one -- I have read have left me with the lasting impression that the bulk of computer game players are really decent folks.

I don't take issue with what some would label "Murder Simulators". In fact, they're my preferred form of entertainment. It's just that the games I buy and play tend to fall more into, what I would call, the "Hero Simulator" catagory. Call me old fashion but I like to shoot guys and gals I perceive to be bad.

For the record, I consider aliens hell-bent on Earth's destruction to be bad. What's so bad about some guy walking down the street?

When I go to bed at night, after hours of intense gunplay, I fall asleep a hero -- and it's wonderful.

I've figured for a while now that most of the posts worth reading had a name attached, so you've made my reading that much easier.

I may not always make the brightest, most insightful comments (I'm usually on my way to the end of a 12-pack when I get to BN!! : ) but I, like so many folks who make good comments, have no problem attaching my virtual name to what I say

Back in The Day, I played Marathon (all of 'em) on my Mac(s), and more recently, Myth on my PC and Halo on the Xbox. If Bungie starts making board games, I'll happily fish my card table out of the closet and dump some pretzels into a bowl. I'll continue to buy Bungie games because, IMHO, so far, they've been worth my time and money - I think they're fun. When they stop being fun, I'll stop buying them. Consider this notice, Bungie! : )

Back on topic:

Within seconds of playing Halo, I realized I was *really* playing Marathon IV ... and I was thrilled. Is Halo's story part of the Marathon storyline? I don't know. But I think it's easy to argue that Halo (kinda like Doom III to ID) is the game that Bungie really wanted to make way back when they made the original Marathon (Doom: ID). With this in mind, I bet Halo 2 will be (more like) the game that Bungie really wanted to make when they made Halo. I'm excited.

They're settled into new offices and a new platform and working on a sequel to a game that I'm guessing was about the biggest all-around pain in the collective ass to create they've ever experienced. God bless 'em! But now they don't have any excuses not to deliver on their promises.

I enjoyed (and am still enjoying) Halo enough that I'd be happy if they just continued with their existing tech and plopped me on the next Installation with a few more marines, a few new toys and ten more chapters all matching the quality of 'Halo', 'The Silent Cartographer' and '343 Guilty Spark'. More fun from the comfort of my couch!

My "Marathon, Myth, Halo" experience with Bungie leads me to believe that they're planning to give me (Well... for $50) everything on my list above wrapped in a shiny new engine. My "Halo Only" experience with Bungie *screams*, "Hey! When they first introduced me to Halo, they promised me a bunch more vehicles to drive or fly around a seamless, persistent world as I chose when and where I would take the fight to my enemy -- from the comfort of my PC and/or Macintosh!"

If Halo 2 is just a prettier whirl-wind, shooting gallery tour through 'Assault on the Control Room 2'... Halo 3 is gonna have to come with a VR rig, a stack of condoms and a free trip to Vegas for me ever to sing Bungie's praises again. Again, consider this notice, Bungie! : )

The only reason I bought an Xbox was because I had $250 (with Halo -- before tax) extra and I was bored with Jedi Knight II. I vowed never to pay $350 (with Halo -- before tax)and was glad to see the price drop.

While I'm not ready to dump my PC (Warcraft III has been keeping me pretty busy) I'm pretty darn happy with my Xbox purchase. For less than I paid for the graphics card in my PC, I get a whole 'nother way to appreciate games.

And when Xbox live hits the streets running, I'll be able to play Unreal Championship while my GF plays The Sims Online without straining out relationship.

I too was a mouse and keyboard only type... until I played Halo. I found the default controls to be a bit nerve wracking at first but then amazingly comfortable -- after just a few sessions.

I'm an old-school shooter guy and I'll tell you, playing a good (Well, Halo is great... but not THAT great {read: repetative})FPS while chilling on your couch is really, really cool. And I have a nice, comfy chair at my computer! : )

I e-mailed to cancel my account and have heard nothing from them in the last two weeks. Last I checked, My account was still active. What up with dat?

This was after I tried the ACCOUNT button on the start screen that took me to a webapage, then had me put in me unfo -- username, pass -- omly to tell me that the name I know is corrct is no good. Not much point sending them e-mail about findout what's wrong with my perfectly good UN and Pass as I doubt I'll ever hear back from them.

If getting out of AO is as much of a pain getting in the game was. Ahhhhhh. I'm doomed

I've been waiting for word on how to cancel my account... so far, no dice. I already took the game back to EB for a refund; I'm afraid they're gonna charge my credit card account. When will the hurting stop?!

#41, if you're cool with spending money on broken products, and there are many who feel as you do, we gamers can expect to see more and more crap coming out. Level of quality will fall in line with level of expectation. Sounds like this is already happening with MMORPGs; people are excusing Anarchy Online's unplayable state by pointing to Everquest and Ultima Online. I guess if UO and EQ were crap when they first started then it's OK for AO. That underdstood, we can expect Planetside and Jumpgate to be unplayable too. This sounds like a bad thing to me.

On a happy note: one advantage you have, because of your stance on quality, is a much larger pool of titles to pick from than we who expect stability and general polish from the games we purchase. Lucky you!

Anarchy Online is a total mess. As has been mentioned, it is close to impossible to get in the game and, once you manage to log on, you are lucky to play for more than 5 minutes without getting booted.

Rampant graphics glitches and show stopper problems, disappearing inventory items, odd NPC behavior, bigtime lag... I didn't know I was buying a beta when I plunked down $50 for the box and signed over my credit card number for another $13 a month. I really feel ripped off.